Landscape gardening

I am a landscaper and have have run my own landscaping and driveway business in Lancashire for a few years now. It is incredibly hard work. Not just the physical work but the running of a business and trying to make a profit. I would say that the business side of things is about 50% of your route to success. I know of really skilled, good landscapers who hardly make a crust and others whose work is not exactly top notch who make a killing. It's because they are more toughened business people. It's not exactly a glamourous job and requires tough decision making and organisational skills to be a success, then there is the actual landscaping part to it!

 

Do you guys do lawn care work such as feeding , weed control scarification etc? There seems to be a lot of franchisees offering these services such as Greenthumb and greenuk.We had aleaflet through the door this morning from them. I have heard they are quite expensive. You can buy a greenthumb franchise for 30 grand!! b****** hell!!

 

Not as an advertised service ( only for regular customers), The green thumb prices are rock bottom and it wouldnt be worth trying to compete with them.

Further, it can be very difficult to get good spraying weather, a season like last year would be a complete nightmare. I could imagine youd also get a fare share of very long grass and dog ****!

There are always folk stupid enough to pay large amounts of cash for franchied business and its not the franchisee that makes the money.

Im afraid there really is NO EASY MONEY to be made in horticulture.

 

There is even a Landscaping franchise called scenic blue who have now been bought out by Marshalls I think, they do the whole garden design and conruction thing, I bet they are very expensive.

 

Im a lady gardener. I went to Horticultural college and then went on to university to study Horticultural science. I intended to set up a business as a specialist grower, but to cut a long story short I found myself working as a lady gardener to get some money. I enjoy it I dont make much money from it, I do most things but always try to bear in mind the scientific aspects of whatever the job im doing. There is plenty of work to do,you can specialise by picking an area eg just do lawn maintainace or hedge trimming etc. or just generalise, but the designing bit is harder to get into, lots more competition and people dont want to spend big money,you have to be experienced although once you got a few under your belt, word of mouth is the best advert. You could try specialising by attaching yourself to a housing developer...you do their planting for them?

 

House builders and developers lol, Not if you like regular money!

Most take about two invoices and a payment due reminder letter plus phone calls to get them to pay (some two month later if lucky!)

Even if your terms are 30 days they ignore this.

I WILL NOT now work for developers or large buisnesses for this reason.